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CIU FAST FACTS
75
The number of CIU
student-athletes
competing in 2014-15.
CIU Athletics Moves “Fore!”ward
with Men’s Golf
First Coach is Well-Known Columbia Coaching Pro
By Bob Holmes
Columbia International University’s first men’s golf coach never
played golf until the summer between high school graduation
and his freshman year at the University of South Carolina (USC).
But teeing up for the first time was the
first life-changing
event in
his life.
“I was head over heels in love with the game,” said Coach
George Bryan. “I was addicted.
“I would literally sleep four, five hours a night, maybe six, and
I would be at the golf course before the sun would come up
practicing under the lights, not lights that you flip on, but street
lights, so I was practicing in the dark,” Bryan added.
The commitment paid off. Bryan made the USC Gamecocks
men’s golf squad as a walk-on freshman, and golf would become
his vocation.
After college, Bryan pursued a professional golf career
personally teaching and coaching hundreds of professionals and
amateurs, and implementing golf-related entrepreneurial and
educational endeavors for over 25 years.
Bryan created the Irmo-Chapin Recreation Commission Golf
Program in suburban Columbia and was instrumental in various
golf initiatives in South Carolina schools through the South
Carolina Junior Golf Association (SCJGA). He also created the
George Bryan Golf Academy located at various golf courses
throughout the Columbia area helping juniors and adults
improve their game.
Soft-spoken with graying hair, a warm smile, and a face slightly
weathered by decades on sunny southern golf courses, the
53-year-old downplays his score as “below par” and says he has
“had the privilege of competing at times at the highest levels.”
Major golf events on his resume include the PGA Championship
at Medina Country Club near Chicago in 1999 and at Harbour
Town on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina in 2004.
About the only thing Bryan did not have on his golf resume was
college coach. That brings us to the
second life-changing
event
in his life.
“October 1, 2013, spiritually, I came alive,” Bryan begins his
Christian testimony.
Bryan says before that date he was a church goer, but “a very
ATHLETICS
selfish individual, and really good at it.” He attended a meeting
that day for church members who desired to serve in the church.
While Bryan doesn’t remember much of what was said in the
meeting, he says “apparently the Holy Spirit came in and did His
thing in my mind and in my soul.”
Since that day Bryan has wanted “to serve and glorify God.”
“I walked out of the meeting with a new perspective on life, and
that included business,” Bryan said. “It is my prayer to learn to
serve Him as an individual and in my vocation.”
Enter an old acquaintance: CIU Athletics Director Kim Abbott, a
former University of South Carolina golf coach, who Bryan had
known since the early 1990s. He had once tried to recruit Abbott
to join him in his golf programs as an instructor. She turned him
down to instead focus on motherhood at the time. In 2014, the
tables were turned. She sought his advice about starting a men’s
golf program at CIU, eventually encouraging him to apply for the
coaching job.
Bryan struggled with the decision when the position was offered
to him. But his wife of 29 years, Valerie, encouraged him to join
her in prayer about the offer.
“The more we prayed about it, the more it sounded like a great
idea,” Bryan said. He told his wife, “I think the Lord wants me to
do this. I don’t think this is something that I came up with.”
Bryan is now in rapid recruiting mode, needing to field a team
of at least six golfers by August, but would like to have twice
that many if possible. He is also using his contacts around the
Columbia area to line up golf courses for home matches.
Bryan says coaching at CIU is what he has been looking for since
that second, and most important life-changing event. He wants
to use golf as a tool to spread the gospel, and he is learning
from the coaches of the other CIU sports and observing how
they interact with their athletes.
“I take the challenge very seriously,” Bryan said. “Where can
the game of golf go into this world to make it a better place?
Wherever that is, it’s going to be pretty special.”
Meanwhile, Athletics Director Abbott says Bryan not only has the
knowledge and passion for golf, but “his love of the Lord and
his desire to create a CIU team that will serve God through the
game of golf, make him a perfect fit for CIU and its mission.”
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ATHLETICS
CIU Today
Summer 2015